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Friday, 31 October 2014

Xbox 0.7

Ladies and gentlemen, we are pleased to announce a new series following the lives of consoles as they try to make more money: Made In Taiwan.

Jeez, Microsoft sure have been busy for the last year. We've seen price cuts, marketing campaigns, even more price cuts, the exclusion of Kinect 2 and countless exclusivity deals, but it looks like Ol' Tiles is working on an updated version of the Xbox One already, Beyond3D forum member mosen discovered on an AMD employee's LinkedIn page.

Now, before we go into details about what this update will look like, there's one question to ask: Why would Microsoft want to update the Xbox so early? Well, if you have two different versions of a console on the market, it may not sell double the numbers, but it does reach two different markets: in this case the people who can afford a vanilla Xbox One, and the people who can't and/or don't have the space for it or don't like the design.

But why wouldn't you? VHS is in now!

Anyway, the LinkedIn page states that said AMD employee "successfully planned and executed the first APU for Microsoft's Xbox One... in 28nm technology and a cost-reduced derivative (Ed: Or an APU derived from the original APU) in 20nm technology." If you saw that jumble of letters and numbers and thought that someone shanked a tin of Alphabetti Spaghetti over my laptop, hear me out.

The transistors in the APUs are measure in nm, and 28 nm stands for one thousand-millionth of a metre. This means that the transistors in this new APU are only 20 thousand-millionths of a metre each, therfore making the CPU smaller, emitting less heat and becoming cheaper to make. It also means that less space is needed in the Xbox to air out the APU, and less fans, too.

I don't even need to ask the question, and I've asked it a lot before. Microsoft have really been pushing hard under Phil Spencer, and the negative reactions was the wake-up call they needed. However, the winner of this console war so far isn't Sony or Microsoft, but it's the consumers. This "war" between two companies means that they race to create the best consoles, games and technology, and we get to experience it!

So what do you guys think? Was this one of the most generic, clickbait-esque articles you've ever seen? Tell us in the comments below!